Rarely has anyone summed up a complex, multifaceted experience as neatly as actor Tim Robbins did in the 1988 film "Bull Durham," playing the chronically naive rookie pitcher Ebby LaLoosh. In the following quote, LaLoosh was talking about baseball, but he could just as easily have been describing music or history or even life itself.

“A good friend of mine used to say, ‘This is a simple game,’” he said. “‘You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.’”

This past Monday was one of those losing days. And it’s been raining ever since.

What did we lose? Well, much more than a baseball game. We lost a pair of sublime poets.

To put it more precisely, we lost a pair of songwriters — supreme men of note, pun intended. Jerry Lieber, who was 78, died of cardiopulmonary failure. Nick Ashford died of throat cancer. He was 70.

Think about the music these two had a hand in producing. “Hound Dog." “Jailhouse Rock." “Stand By Me." “”Yakkety-Yak." “On Broadway." And that’s just from Lieber’s resume.

I’m not sure the loss adds up for most people. At first blush, there seemed little to tie the two together. One was white, the other black. One man’s fame was tied to classic rock, while the other’s was engraved in classic pop and soul. And their deaths were separated by more than just genre. Lieber died in Los Angeles, about 2,500 miles away from the New York hospital where Ashford breathed his last.

But they had much in common, too, and I’m not just talking about the common element of genius. Each was one-half of an enduring songwriting partnership. Lieber worked for six decades with collaborator Mike Stoller. Ashford’s musical partner was his life partner and wife of 38 years, Valerie Simpson.

As for race and culture, that’s a touchy matter in any context. But when it comes to American music, race and culture are more a continuum than a checkered map. Our very best musicians share influences with little regard to color.

In fact, Lieber and Stoller, best known for writing a song that was arguably Elvis Presley’s greatest hit, repeatedly told interviewers they wrote with black voices in mind. “I felt black,” Lieber once told an interviewer from Rolling Stone, despite the evidence to the contrary. “I was as far as I was concerned.”

Of course, these connections don’t come to mind strictly because of the music. They intersect this week because of a coincidence the two men share — the closing date planned for their tombstones.

But then history has shown a distinct fondness for coincidence, which, it turns out, is a volume business. If history has proved nothing else, it is this: Given enough years, coincidence will out.

Exhibit A? That would be founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, part-time friends and longtime be rivals. In 1826, time stalked the two aging men. It caught up with them on July 4, the country’s 50th birthday.

On that day, Adams’ thoughts fixated on his old political enemy to the end. His last words are reported to have been, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

It turned out he was wrong. Jefferson had died a few hours earlier.

This is not uncommon. Coincidence, by its very nature, lends itself to misstatement and misinterpretation. I saw a headline about Lieber and Ashford the day following their death. It read, “The day the music died.”

Nice idea, eloquently expressed, but absolutely wrong. True, two notable lives came to an end. But as always, the music pulses on.

After all, all Adams and Jefferson did was help pen the opening chapters of American history. Lieber and Ashford helped write the soundtrack.